Personal notes: 2022 House of Councillors election report: A gambler goes (excite blog)

July 15, 2022

In this House of Councillors election, my campaign activities were small-scale from the start, and the death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was a big shock. Therefore, I am depressed, even though the election results of the candidates I personally recommended were 8 wins and 0 losses.

◎Kanagawa electoral district

First, in my local Kanagawa electoral district, there are 4 seats up for election and 1 by-election (3-year term), so there are 5 seats available for election this time. A total of 22 candidates were competing in this election.

The main party candidates are (titles omitted): ↓

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

・LDP: Junko Mihara (current), Keiichiro Asao (former)

・Komeito: Shinsuke Miura (current)

・Japan Innovation Party: Shigefumi Matsuzawa (former)

・Constitutional Democratic Party: Yusuke Terasaki (new), Motoko Mizuno (new)

・Communist Party: Yuka Asaga (new)

・People's Party: Jesus Fukasaku (new)

・SDP: Kaiichi Uchi (new)

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

The candidates I recommended to my acquaintances were Junko Mihara (current) and Keiichiro Asao (former) of the LDP, and both of them won.

However, the usual "election gambling" was quite a miss.

… … … …… … … … … … … … … … … … … …

● Predictions (as of 7/7)

(Rank) (Candidate) (Odds)

1. Junko Mihara 1.3

2. Shinsuke Miura 1.6

3. Keiichiro Asao 1.7

4. Narufumi Matsuzawa 2.3

5. Yuka Asaga 2.9

6. Motoko Mizuno 3.1

↓

● Results

(Rank) (Candidate)

1. Junko Mihara

2. Narufumi Matsuzawa

3. Shinsuke Miura

4. Keiichiro Asao

5. Motoko Mizuno

… … … …… … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Narufumi Matsuzawa's second place was surprising. The reason for the first Kanagawa by-election (3-year term) was that he gave up his term last year and ran for mayor of Yokohama, which is in turmoil over IR and casinos. I am not impressed with his political stance of jumping on anything that is newsworthy, but the people of Kanagawa Prefecture have accepted it.

I also thought that Terasaki and Mizuno of the Constitutional Democratic Party would both fall and Asaga of the Communist Party would rise to the top, but in the second half of the election campaign, the Constitutional Democratic Party's election campaign team made an unprecedented and terrible decision to abandon Terasaki and focus on Mizuno, so Mizuno barely managed to slip in. I think that in the Kanagawa electoral district, the LDP, Komeito, and Communist Party ran election campaigns that were in line with their capabilities, and the Constitutional Democratic Party revealed its lack of prior research.

By the way, Komeito's Miura Shinsuke, who came in third, was an associate professor at the National Defense Academy before becoming a politician. He supports constitutional reform, but he also supports granting local voting rights to permanent foreign residents, the introduction of a selective system of separate surnames for married couples, and same-sex marriage. There are quite a few Komeito-affiliated people like this (Komeito's basic stance is pro-China and pro-Korea) in defense and diplomatic relations, so it is difficult to steer our country.

However, there are some no-good people in the LDP as well. Candidate Eri Alfiya, who ran in the national proportional representation this time, said, "If Japan and China were to go to war, would you be able to fight for Japan?" is a discriminatory question," and "There is no diversity in Japanese politics." It's a failure to have someone like this as a candidate.

◎Local electoral districts

Outside of Kanagawa, the author recommended the following candidates.

●Hokkaido electoral district (3 seats): Toshimi Funabashi (new) → Elected

●Fukuoka electoral district (3 seats): Satoshi Oya (incumbent) → Elected

Hokkaido was a tough place because the Democratic Party and the Constitutional Democratic Party were strong, but Funabashi fought well and came in third. In Fukuoka, Oya, who came second last time, came in first.

◎National proportional representation

The candidates recommended were Shigeharu Aoyama, Satsuki Katayama, Eriko Yamatani, and Hiroshi Yamada from the LDP, and all of them were elected.

In terms of wins and losses, we should be satisfied with 8 wins and 0 losses, but as I said at the beginning, I still feel sad because former Prime Minister Abe was shot to death. I suspect that this incident was more of a "murder" than a personal crime, so I would like to discuss that in a separate entry.

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